We are to admit no more causes of natural things (as we are
told by Newton) than such as are both true and sufficient
to explain their appearances. This central theme is basic to
the pursuit of science, and goes back to the principle known
as Occam's razor: ``if presented with a choice between
indifferent alternatives, then one ought to select the simplest one'' [1].
Unconsciously or explicitly, informal application
of this principle in science and mathematics abound.

The principle of Occam's razor is not only relevant to science and
mathematics, but to fine arts as well. Some artists consciously
prefer ``simple" art by claiming: ``art is the art of omission."
Furthermore, many famous works of art were either consciously or
unconsciously designed to exhibit regularities that intuitively
simplify them. For instance, every stylistic repetition and every
symmetry in a painting allows one part of the painting to be
described in terms of its other parts. Intuitively, redundancy of
this kind helps to shorten the length of the description of the
whole painting, thus making it simple in a certain sense.

It is possible to formalize the intuitive notions of ``simplicity"
and ``complexity." Appropriate mathematical tools are provided by
the theory of Kolmogorov complexity (or algorithmic complexity) [2].
The Kolmogorov complexity of some computable object
is essentially the length
(measured in number of bits)
of the shortest algorithm that can be
used to compute it.
The shorter the algorithm,
the simpler the object [3].

In this paper, I use basic concepts from the theory of algorithmic
complexity to serve as ingredients for a novel form of simple art
that I call ``low-complexity art." Although the focus in this
article will be on black-and-white cartoons, the basic ideas are
not limited to this type of application.